


half-healed hurts & absent shirts

by unicyclehippo



Series: Blue Girls Have The Most Fun [50]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, beau is having what experts would call A Time, her beau, jester wants a real answer to her questions & the chance to help her friend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:01:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25765630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unicyclehippo/pseuds/unicyclehippo
Summary: Prompt: "Take off your shirt" for Beaujester?
Relationships: Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett
Series: Blue Girls Have The Most Fun [50]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1824289
Comments: 2
Kudos: 159





	half-healed hurts & absent shirts

It’s early in the morning now. The sun hasn’t quite risen from its cradle within the mountains but the sky is slowly being bleached to a pale gauzy grey by its light; it washes through the cloud-cover, turning it into a rippled fabric roof that feels heavy and strange. Maybe it’s just because Jester is accustomed to the seaside, that burned-blue sky that changes seemingly on a quick wind to storm-tossed grey and back again. The sky in Rexxentrum never seems to change. Never goes entirely black with storm like it feels like it should. Never clears. Just…hangs there.

Jester is staring out at it when a hand presses somewhat clumsily onto the glass pane and shoves at it. The latch strains, metal rasp against metal, and then pops open— _that_ not very secure, someone should tell the nice, vaguely overbearing dwarven lady about that. Hinges shriek faintly. Someone, probably the person whose hands those are, swears quietly.

‘You know,’ Jester says, and watches those fingers grow white with pressure beneath the splattering of grime and blood, ‘you could have come through the door. It might’ve been quieter, Beau.’

Beau hangs a moment longer. Then, with a long grunt of effort, lifts herself up onto the sill. She straddles it and inches carefully through the thin window into the room; despite herself, Jester is kinda impressed. If she hadn’t been awake already, she never would’ve woken up Beau does it so quietly, and—and this can’t be forgotten—they _are_ on the second floor.

‘Very impressive!’ Jester shuffles in the bed, sits up, applauses brightly. Beau’s form is all in shadow, silhouetted by the rising sun, but Jester sees her shoulders rise with a little shrug.

‘Thanks.’

Jester frowns. ‘Are you okay? You sound weird.’

‘Fine.’ Beau pulls herself fully through the window. If Jester hadn’t been watching closely, she would miss the way the other girl sways. Puts her hand out on the end of the bed to steady herself. She wonders idly what she might have missed in the past, if she hadn’t been watching. ‘I’m gonna take a bath. Wake myself up.’

‘Oh, but, did you sleep?’

‘Yeah. Yeah, I slept,’ Beau tells her. She doesn’t sound like she’s lying, but. Jester also knows she’s good at it. ‘Just went on a little, y’know, wake up run. Some exercises. Don’t wanna get flabby during down time, gotta keep in peak physical condish.’ Her voice is typical Beau: brash, harsh, over-confident, warm. pointed. Like she’s talking right to Jester. It isn’t so profound an effect when it’s just the two of them—and a sleeping Yasha on the floor but she’s sleeping—but Jester still feels it.

It’s distracting. Jester pulls her knees up to her chest, wraps her arms around them. With a cheek pillowed on her knees, eyes tracking the way Beau picks her way across the floor, Jester wonders if maybe that means something. If maybe Beau _meant_ something, something _real_ , when she talked about how good Icky-thong and Da’leth were at talking around something. How she had agreed when Jester mentioned the details.

‘Why do you have blood on your hands?’ Jester asks, before Beau can reach the door. ‘Is that part of your morning exercises?’

Beau stops. Turns toward Jester. Not fully, but enough that she can eye the bed, and Jester in it. Enough that Jester can see one corner of Beau’s mouth as it twitches into a stretched smile.

‘Yeah. Sometimes, I dunno if you’ve noticed,’ she comments with a grin, ‘but I punch things.’

Jester stares at that smile, the half of it she can see. She purses her lips. ‘I’m not stupid Beau.’

‘What? No, I know you’re not!’

‘I _know_ you punch things.’ Jester swings her legs out, touches her feet down onto the pleasantly chilly wooden floor. She wiggles her toes. ‘I know you don’t punch _trees_ and whatever,’ she insists. ‘Not until you bleed.’

‘Advanced monk techniques. Always learning new shit.’

‘That lie,’ Jester says, trying to keep her voice steady, ‘wasn’t as good as your others. Turn around.’

Beau stays where she is. Facing the door.

‘I’m gonna take a bath. I stink.’

‘Beau, Turn around.’

‘No.’

Jester stares, confused, at Beau’s back. ‘No?’ She doesn’t think Beau has ever told her no before. Not like this, not without suggesting something else, or, or, or saying _Hey I like the idea but it’s also the worst one I’ve ever heard, just saying._

‘I’m taking a bath. And I’m going to the Archives afterwards. Don’t wait for me. Tell the others.’

‘Oh. Okay.’

Jester hates the way her voice sounds—small and confused, lost. Hates the way Beau’s shoulder twitches before she reaches out for the door to the hallway and slips out, out of sight.

She waits there a moment, tail curling and uncurling around her ankle. She listens to the sounds: Yasha’s deep, even breathing, so nice to hear after she had been gone for so long; foot traffic and the wooden tap of wheels over cobbled stone from the few wagons moving around so early in the day; the silence like a held breath and then the distant rattle and hum of pipes from the bathroom.

Jester’s eyes drop from the doorway to the floor. There’s a pool of blood where Beau had been standing. Small, maybe a good dozen or so heavy drops. Jester’s stomach squirms at the sight of it. Too much to have come from scraped knuckles.

‘This is a bad idea,’ she tells herself but steps forward, over the blood, and pushes open the door to follow after Beau.

* * *

The washroom is lovely, if small. It’s obviously only intended for one or two occupants. The bath itself is only big enough for one adult, though feasibly if one wasn’t particularly concerned with comfort, two or three could cram into the space. The bottom person might drown, of course, but it’s only a hypothetical.

Hot water is pouring into the tub and filling the room with steam but Beau is still dressed. She is leaned over the hand basin in a pose Jester has never seen from her. Slumped. Tired. Standing a pace or two back, Beau has most of her weight braced on one arm that clutches the edge of the basin. Her head hangs down, hair loose and falling like a curtain down around her face. Her other hand, Jester sees—in the instant between breaking the handle to burst in and Beau whirling around to face her—her other hand is curled around her waist. No, a little higher. Around her ribs.

‘What’s wrong with your ribs?’ Jester demands.

‘What the fuck?’ Beau snaps back. The tone is rough; her face is rougher. The steam isn’t enough to hide the damage to her face—the rapidly swelling cheekbone, obviously broken, the split in the same eyebrow. ‘Jester, I’m in the fucking bathroom—I could’ve been taking a shit or –’

‘But you aren’t taking a shit!’ Jester dodges Beau’s pushing hand and slides into the room fully, kicks the door shut behind her. ‘You’re in here being weird and bleeding and not telling me what’s wrong! I _know_ there’s something wrong, Beau, I’m not stupid!’

‘Why do you—Has someone called you stupid?’ Beau half asks, half demands. The surprise of it breaks as she steps back, face hardening into stern, into angry again, like she’s clutching at the emotion. ‘Why do you keep saying that? Who was it?’

‘No, no one, it’s just—Ah!’ Jester almost screams, jabs a finger toward Beau. They’re close, not quite face to face but the room isn’t terribly large, and her finger waves under Beau’s nose. ‘Don’t try to distract me! It won’t work! What’s wrong with you, why are you bleeding?’

The steam has wafted away from their faces, largely escaped out the door and now curls around their feet, building again, pouring from the bathtub as the water level rises slowly. With no filter, nothing to hide Beau’s face, Jester sees the flicker of something in those dark eyes—fear? Annoyance? Upset? As soon as she sees it, it’s gone again; Jester pours over Beau’s face, her stance, but she’s gone still and silent and there’s nothing to pluck, nothing to catch.

‘Bad training session,’ Beau lies. There’s no effort to it this time at all. She out and out lies.

Jester scowls across at her. ‘Don’t lie to me, Beau. I don’t care what you were doing—well, no, I _care_ but you know if it was a bar fight I would think that’s really fun, and if it was Dairon, I would kick them in the teeth because wow-a, you are fucked _up_ ,’

‘Thanks. I think I held my own pretty good, though.’ Beau smirks. chucks her chin up in that infuriating smug way she does. There’s still nothing behind the unblinking eyes.

‘I just _mean_ , whatever it is, Beau, I just want to make sure you’re okay. You know that, right?’

‘Of course.’

‘Of course,’ Jester repeats, brow crinkling. She can’t figure out why it sounds so weird, so off. Shrugs it away uncomfortably. ‘So?’

‘So what?’

‘Are you gonna let me heal you or what?’

There is a long, long moment where Jester has no idea what Beau is going to say. It’s strange, because they’ve been through storms and fights and people nearly dying and getting kidnapped and being pirates and shopping and rescuing people and Jester was pretty sure that, if not an open book, Beau was fairly easy to read. That she got the gist of what Beau was saying, or what she wanted to say. But here, in a cramped steaming room with very little space between them and the pressing weight of a lot of very important very scary things bearing down on all sides, Jester looks for the face of her friend in the woman across from her and finds nothing of her in the smooth mask. And who is behind that mask, Jester can’t quite say.

‘Beau?’ she says tentatively.

Beau blinks. Then a smile ticks up at the corner of her lips, crooked, charming in a roguish kind of way that is only emphasised by the blood that drips down from her brow. ‘I don’t mind a scar or two,’ she says dismissively, taking a step back.

‘I think you’ll mind when your broken cheek stops you from eating. Or gets infected and your brain swells up and you die.’

‘Sexy. That’s the way I’ve always wanted to go, how’d you know?’

‘ _Beau_.’

Finally, Beau’s eyes cut away from her. It isn’t much, but it’s enough. Almost a flinch.

‘Have I—done something wrong?’

‘ _No_ ,’ Beau insists, instantly, the word spat between them. Her eyes are back on Jester, burning hot. ‘ _No_.’

‘Then what is it? Because first you’re not wanting to sleep in the same room with me and then you’re not talking to me and you’re sneaking out in the middle of the night to go I don’t even know where.’

‘Fight.’

‘Well obviously,’ Jester mutters, accent thick with upset.

‘In a fighting pit.’ Beau breaks her harsh stance. She steps over to the bath and twists the tap off so it stops filling. It’s at about the halfway mark now and she busies herself for a moment, sniffing at a few of the bottles on the counter, nose wrinkling at the heavily perfumed ones. She tips in a few drops of something that smells of wood notes, lets the oil diffuse into the water. A drop of something red falls in alongside it and Beau starts, a small jerk. Her head drops.

‘I get to fight,’ she tells Jester, and lowers herself down onto the small stool beside the bath. One arm rests on the lip of the bath. The other curls around her middle again. ‘Until I win, or until I’m fucked up.’ She grins. It’s more of a baring of teeth. ‘Same thing, kinda.’

‘Oh.’ Jester looks around for another stool. There isn’t one, so she perches on the edge of the bath. ‘So. You’re, like, not okay then.’

Beau’s grin widens. She laughs a little, disbelieving. Shakes her head. ‘I guess not.’

‘Is it because of Caleb?’

‘What?’

‘You were super pissed the whole time we were at—at that place he used to be. And every time Caleb mentioned Ikith—‘

‘ _Don’t_. Don’t say his name.’ Beau squeezes her eyes shut tight. Winces at the pressure that puts on her brow, the cut splitting open and bleeding afresh; she lifts her hand, presses the fleshy part of her palm hard against her brow. ‘Yeah. I hated that.’

Jester narrows her eyes. ‘But is that _really_ why? Or are you letting me _think_ that’s why?’

‘I’m not that good of a liar, Jester.’

‘But are you _really_ not, or are you just _saying_ tha—‘

‘Jes.’

Jester huffs. Arranges her skirts, folding the pleats neatly.

They sit together for a few long moments in silence. Then Beau bends with a groan to start to remove her boots. After watching her struggle for a moment, Jester slides to the floor to help. She bats Beau’s hands away when she tries to stop her.

‘Jes, no, you don’t have to—‘

‘You’re hurt, Beau. Just…let me.’

The laces hiss out of their hoops, loosening their tight grip around Beau’s ankles. Jester tosses one and then the other into the corner of the room, peels Beau’s socks off and throws them soon after. It might be the heat of the room but Beau is flushed, obviously embarrassed. The hand on the bath comes up to cover her face when Jester pats her calf.

‘Thanks,’ she grunts.

‘You’re welcome.’ Jester glances up from beneath lowered lashes, catches the exhaustion written over Beau’s face when she thinks Jester isn’t looking. Softly, she asks, ‘Beau?’

‘Mm.’

‘Are you okay? For real?’

‘I mean, I’m beat to shit.’ She rolls her head on her neck so she can look square down at Jester. She doesn’t pull up a smile this time as she tells her, ‘But that was kinda the point.’

‘No, I know that,’ Jester agrees, though she doesn’t think she does know entirely. Not in the way Beau seems to be implying. ‘But. About everything. You know - everything with Caleb and the beacon and, and Yasha, and,’

‘Right. Yasha,’ Beau sighs, sounding ten times more exhausted. ‘Shit. I need to talk to the Soul later.’

‘About Yasha?’

‘Nah. I mean, yes. Sort of.’ She tilts her head from side-to-side in a half nod. ‘About the way Da’leth lied to them about who Yasha was.’ Beau shakes her head, seeing Jester’s worry. ‘I’m not gonna let them do anything to her. I’m not mad—I’m relieved as hell we got her back, trust me.’

‘I do.’

The tightness in the corners of Beau’s eyes loosens a fraction at the way Jester doesn’t hesitate, not even a moment.

‘Yeah. I just can’t—I can’t side with the Assembly on lying to the Soul just because my friend is caught in the mix.’ Beau sighs. Rubs at her forehead and winces when her fingers brush over the cut. She pulls her hand away, examining the red that paints her hand. A beat of silence, of still, and then Beau shoves to her feet hurriedly. ‘I need a bath. Gotta soak and—not think. For a – for a little while anyway,’ she rasps. She looks almost apologetic. It’s better than looking like nothing at all. Beau looks at her expectantly and then smirks. ‘I don’t mean to be rude but, like, alone?’

Jester rolls her eyes. ‘I’m not leaving until I’ve healed you.’ Discomfort slashes across Beau’s face like the cut of a knife. ‘You didn’t think I would seriously follow you in here and let you get away with not getting healed, did you?’

‘Jes …’

‘No. Take off your shirt,’ Jester tells her, crisp and firm, and she stands as well. Steps closer.

‘Not the way I’m used to hearing _that_ said,’ Beau jokes. It almost covers the flicker of confusion. Fear? She turns around slow. Gripping her shirt at the waist, she pulls it up and over her head.

Jester stares. She can’t help it; she’s seen Beau get changed in their shared room before, shared excursions to bath houses before, but nothing like this. Maybe because it has been a while, maybe because it’s just the two of them, maybe because Beau has gotten stronger and harsher on their travels, maybe because Beau is holding herself tight and tense with pain or worry or vanity; all of it means that Beau’s back is sculpted, layer upon layer of corded muscle and scar make up the planes of Beau’s back holding tight to the column of her spine. The taut muscles of her shoulders clutch to the notch of her neck where it meets the spine. Her scapula shift, probably out of discomfort, maybe sensing Jester’s intense stare, but Jester can’t help it; it’s mesmerising to watch the muscle and bone move beneath Beau’s skin.

But the bruises. The imprint of knuckles, of dull bootprints, the too-perfect ring of knuckledusters; it looks like paint at first, the purples and reds the bloom over Beau’s skin, but it’s a vicious pattern, angry and raw, and it Jester can’t cling to the painless idea of it when she sees the way the impacts have broken the surface now and again, leaving scratches and contusions.

Jester reaches out.

‘I’m—going to heal you now,’ she says softly.

Beau’s muscles jump as she tenses. She nods. ‘Yup. Cool.’

She lays her hand flat on Beau’s back. It drops seemingly of its own accord – surely Jester doesn’t think about doing it, doesn’t _plan_ on doing it – to curl around Beau’s hip; the magic doesn’t burst out of her or sparkle like it sometimes does. Instead Jester—maybe because she’s so entranced, so focused on Beau and healing her—Jester feels _Beau_. Feels her like her magic is touching her, like she’s seeping into Beau, the edges of her self and Beau’s merging for a second. It’s weird and scary and a _lot_ and Jester whips her hand away quickly.

Stares as Beau rolls her shoulders out, the movement exaggerated by being so in her face.

‘Thanks, Jes. That feels better.’

‘Good. Good! I’m glad.’

‘Can I have my bath now?’

Jester hesitates. She reaches out toward Beau, the powerful column of her spine, the soft curve of her hip, but pulls her hand back to her chest. She tries one more time. ‘Are you okay, Beau?’

‘I mean, you healed me so never better.’ She waits a moment. ‘I’m kinda half naked here, Jes.’

It’s not the answer she wanted. Or, it is—she wants Beau to be okay—but it was casual, easy. Another lie. Jester steps out, feeling like she has seen more of Beau than she was prepared for. And not the naked skin part.

Jester focuses a minute on mending the handle and lock of the door she had broken. That, at least, is straightforward. That, at least, she can fix.


End file.
